By Michael Williams
10/19/2017
Imagine meeting with the person who will hold the key to the career of your dreams, a goal you have spent your life pursuing, finally about to be realized. What happens when you arrive, however, is vastly different than expected. Instead of a business meeting, this keyholder wants you to perform lewd acts for them. For many stars in Hollywood, this wasn’t just a hypothetical scenario. It was reality, a reality hinted at before but now being uncovered thanks to the brave victims of Harvey Weinstein who have come forward.
On Oct. 5, The New York Times published an article titled “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades” that detailed the disgusting actions of sexual assault Weinstein had committed against his victims.
Before I go any further, I would like to iterate that I am not a fan of saying an individual is guilty before they are put on trial, especially in rape cases, since both the reputation of the accused and the accuser are tarnished in the media storm, no matter what the outcome.
However, this is not a normal case. Weinstein has settled cases before with multiple women, and there are audio recordings of an incident where Weinstein asks young actress Ashley Judd to watch him shower, among other things. According to Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker during a 10-month investigation, 13 women were sexually assaulted or raped by Weinstein between the 1990’s to 2015.
For a long time, conspiracies about abuse have been floating around Hollywood, and Weinstein was no stranger to these.
As of the writing of this article, actions of have been taken against Weinstein. He was fired from the Weinstein Company by its board. Hopefully, further legal action will happen, not just court settlements but jail time, too.
On Oct. 11, actress Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein’s victims, went on a Twitter rant against him, Ben Affleck and the industry. Her Twitter account was temporarily suspended. Twitter said it was for “privacy and security” reasons, i.e. doxxing, which is posting names or information about other users. However this is infuriatingly ridiculous for two reasons. First, because she was calling out those who were involved in some way with Weinstein, not random people. Second, because Nazis and radical leftists, whose accounts are often overlooked, doxx all the time. Twitter’s policies are not fairly applied, and this should disgust people.
Something that may be lost in all the accusations is that it isn’t just women who have been molested here. Actor Terry Crews was also a victim. Sexual assault and rape affects men, too, and Crews has helped to shine a spotlight on this. Women often aren’t taken seriously when they are raped, and men even less so. Hopefully, we as a society can try to find whatever small silver lining there is in the Harvey Weinstein tragedy and start to look at why sexual assault and rape happen, why survivors don’t speak out and, most importantly, prevent these events from ever occurring again.
